Were the moon landings faked?

[_moksha]

The Quakers live on the dark side of the moon.

Wasn't this knowledge previously revealed to Pink Floyd?

[_richardMdBorn]

From Discovery Channel:

Wednesday, August 27 at 9PM - The Mythbusters take on one of their biggest, most controversial myths ever: Could the July 1969 moon landing have been an elaborate hoax? First, Adam and Jamie focus on photos, testing the theory that two of NASA's most famous images were shot in a studio. Then, they investigate the myth that to get the classic "low lunar gravity look" the government shot the footage in a studio and then simply slowed it down. And Grant, Tory and Kari take on the claims that the footage of footprints and flags flapping in zero gravity had to have been faked.

[_Gadianton]

Yes, they were faked. What other explanation could there be? Joseph Fielding Smith taught that we'd never get to the moon. That this would be like building the Tower of Babel.

[_Ray A]

From the New York Times, originally published Feb. 9, 2003. The man in the spotlight: Bart Sibrel

(Bold emphasis mine)

Statistics are vague, but somewhere between 6 and 10 percent of Americans say they don't believe astronauts ever landed on the moon. That percentage is growing, in part because conspiracy theorists now have easy access to media tools -- jump cuts, dissolves, special effects, studio-quality voice-over, zippy credits -- that bolster their theories with something they've never had before: the elegant formatting of television truth.

Too ridiculous to respond in detail:

NASA has been confounded by these questions, though not because the agency is unable to answer them. Rather, the old science geeks believe it is beneath their SAT scores to respond at all. As James Oberg, a noted space writer, recalls: ''NASA put out this press release in 2001 that said something like: 'There's a debate about whether we went to the moon. We did.' End of press release. They are hampered by their own conceit.'' ...NASA may have the facts on their side, in terms of understanding how the contemporary media work, the space agency is light years behind Bart Sibrel.

The nasa.gov Web site, for example, refuses to debunk hoaxers directly. Rather the tone is often one of child's play, including suggested classroom exercises to demonstrate rumor-mongering and truth demolition: ''Hoax Cuisine! The Proof is in the Pudding! -- Students can make a delicious hoax right in the classroom! Chocolate pudding, chocolate crumbs, gummy worms . . . is it something from the fishing-supply store or the kitchen?''

NASA finally responds, for a while:

Such countertactics were shown to be especially outmatched when Fox Television first ran its own moon-hoax documentary in February 2001, based in large measure on Sibrel's work. By last summer, people at NASA finally decided to meet the propaganda head on and hired Oberg to develop a counterconspiracy media strategy. Ultimately his task was to publish his work in order to reassert control over the story and to prove once again that, yes, Virginia, there is a Neil Armstrong. But not long after Oberg was hired, NASA was embarrassed by press reports of the assignment and panicked at the thought of being seen as surrendering intellectual equivalence to the hoaxers. ''We canceled the program,'' a spokesman, Bob Jacobs, told me. ''There is no book deal. We are not taking on the hoaxers.'' Oberg was fired, and NASA returned to its old posture of benign neglect.

Jesus drove Sibrel. Fake Moon landing a "new faith":

What drove him to this new level of understanding, Sibrel said, was not simply the mounting evidence. Itwas Jesus. But before his lunar revelation, Sibrel explained, he had been carrying on a chaotic life of wenching and drugging. He gave up his party days, broke off a relationship devoted to ''fornication'' and became friends with the Lord. It made perfect sense that the new clarity with which he saw his own life might also be good for the nation. Then and there, all the pieces of the hoax finally added up. The greatest achievement of a great nation was a debauched lie. America was what Sibrel had once been: a wretched sinner.
''I remember that I cried and cried,'' Sibrel said of his new faith (moon-hoax, that is). ''And I thought, Oh, the wickedness of humanity.''

Sibrel's influence:

''Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon?'' borrowed heavily from Sibrel's work, smoothing away the uglier, more libelous stuff and leaving only the fancy edits and the questions about fluttering flags. ''The Fox show did incredible damage,'' Plait said. ''After it aired, a new kind of doubt was created. I had a geology major at my college tell me she was no longer sure that all the pictures were real.'' In Sibrel's second documentary, he expands on his previous work by borrowing a mainstream tactic: the ambush interview. With cameras rolling, he has confronted nine astronauts, shoved a Bible at each one and challenged them to swear to God that they had been to the moon. Although some of the astronauts in fact did take the oath, Sibrel doesn't like to talk about them. Like any good TV producer, he knows where the action is.

Believing the impossible, and O, the wickedness of man:

All religious conversion is about coming to believe what once seemed impossible, and the greater the distance between the old degraded story and born-again revision, the more credible the teller of tales. Now this mode of revelation has visited our politics. It's no coincidence that the on-camera purveyors of an evangotainment tape insinuating that Clinton slaughtered eight people were Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. Sibrel's story is just another variation of this, another story of our national wretchedness.

The effects of propaganda:

To NASA, Sibrel is a media leech, gaining attention by faking the fakery. But to others, he's making reality TV exposing the greatest lie since Eve explained her new diet plan to Yahweh. As public policy, the conversion format may never take hold in Washington. But beneath the mainstream radar, it's fueling a new kind of acceptable anti-Americanism. It is a secular faith that believes the country's true self has been bloated by taking pride in lies. Its credo holds that America must be humbled by the facts of its weakness before its actual greatness can be revealed. Only once we confess that we never went to the moon will we truly be able to get there.

Moon Landing Mysteries: Moon Landing Mysteries (All footage obviously fake, and includes interview clips with that infamous liar Buzz Aldrin )

[_cksalmon]

Hello There Scotte,,

Please Check Out this Web Site Page:

Bad Astronomy: Bad TV:

A reasonable and intelligent series of answers. Even as a conspiracy buff, this website and the websites it led me to more than sufficiently answered the questions raised by my fellow conspiracy buffs.

Well done. The controversialist theory has here been, to my mind, legitimately exposed for what it is: sensationalistic, if well-intentioned, falsehoods masquerading as "legitimate" controversy.

Chris